geller1b

Public sculpture that's actually good: Matthew Geller's Awash, which opened tonight in Collect Pond Park in Lower Manhattan, and will be installed through November 25. It's a "portable fountain" made of sidewalk scaffolding, Plexigas, and PVC pipe. As you sit in the swings, water flows over your head like rain sliding down a loft skylight, and is then recycled through the PVC ductwork and back up through a pump in the water tank. It's romantic, carefree, and absurd at the same time, and the materials are completely unassuming. Last year, Geller's piece Foggy Day--notable for its artificial fog bank in Chinatown's Cortlandt Alley--was criticized by no less than the New York Sun and Fox News as socially dubious "fog art." The site for this new, budgetarily conscious urban earthwork is Collect Pond Park, a bland but historically charged spot across from the Tombs (bounded by Franklin, Leonard, Centre and Lafayette). In Manhattan's early history this was once a beautiful lake called the Collect, which became putrescent with urbanization, was drained, and served as the boggy foundations for the Five Points slum, made famous in The Gangs of New York. Now the land's surrounded by courthouses and other government buildings, and is in bad need of being rescued by something as funky as this. (One thinks also of the World Trade Center kiddie pool memorial--but that wasn't supposed to be funky.)

Re: the twilight photos--I was taking advantage of The Golden Hour.

Update: photo lightened and color-corrected from the original crepuscular blue; another photo moved to the comments that is still blue but shows the flowing water more clearly. Yes, I fell down in my role of NY art documentarian. I got lost in the Five Points government building maze and the hour was getting later and later...

Update: Here are some better pictures from the LMCC blog:

Matthew Geller Awash LMCC 1

Matthew Geller Awash LMCC 2

- tom moody 9-14-2006 6:51 am

Judging by the dark blue hue of the photos, i'd say you missed the "golden hour" by a few minutes. Might want to tweak those suckas in PS.

Sorry, totally uncalled for, but I couldn't resist.

Of course, you were probably making an ironic statement on the cliche factor of the golden hour, thus the photos are purposely blue. If so, I look pretty silly, don't I?
- anonymous (guest) 9-14-2006 8:07 pm


forgot to sign my name to the above. just so you know I'm not afraid to look like a dork.
- adrien (guest) 9-14-2006 8:08 pm


the golden hour. they dont mention it here but i think even more is at play. with the light at that almost horizontal angle all colors seem to pop. even regular colors take on an ultra violet hue. best example i can remember is cocktail hour on south-beach. the florescent colors in bathing suits and sunglasses (that were in style in the 80's-90's) as well as all the pastel buildings would fluoresce as though lit up with a UV purple light.
- bill 9-14-2006 8:22 pm


I used Photoshop to take a few hours off the day--I was hoping to avoid that, but since adrien made fun of me...

The problem is heightening the contrast gets rid of an important detail--the water running over the Plex at the top.

I know how to dodge in Photoshop but not how to "burn in" decently enough to save this detail. We are now moving into the realm of total image manipulation.

Here's the dark, blue original:


- tom moody 9-14-2006 9:12 pm


Using the pen tool trace the area you want to protect from manipulation, save it as a path. In the path menu choose select path then in the select menu choose inverse. This will give you a permanant mask which you can select at will alliowing you to manipulate all areas except the water. If you want to manipulate only the water than skip the "inverse" step and all other elements not selected will be protected from manipulation.
- steve 9-15-2006 8:49 am


oof. too much work. forget the dodging and burning. Just use "levels" and lighten the mid-range.
- sally mckay 9-15-2006 6:27 pm


paths work with all treatments, levels included.
- steve 9-15-2006 8:51 pm


yeah true but I don't think this image needs the finesse - just a simple un-murking of mid-range oughta leave the highlights (water) alone without putting in time to trace it. Augh. I can't believe I'm going on about this! It's just that I lighten the midrange on almost every single image I ever use - it's a sort of ingrained default step for me, like applying sharpen after a scan. But who cares? Really...I'm shutting up now.
- sally mckay 9-15-2006 9:45 pm


isnt there just a golden hour button to push?
- bill 9-15-2006 11:11 pm


"Minus Golden Hour plus running water." Thanks for the tips. I'll play around with these options. For some reason I'm learning every wrinkle of the music production software I'm using, reading the manual forwards and backwards, trying all the "hints"--but every time I open Photoshop I get the hives. I know it's a mental block--I just wonder why I only have it about visual computer stuff (or is it only Adobe)?
- tom moody 9-16-2006 12:21 am


is it because PS is an evil tool used in advertising and the other arts of deception?

- bill 9-16-2006 12:27 am


That, but also Adobe isn't intuitive to use, and doesn't produce anything I consider magic the way I consider techno music magic, so I don't feel the same incentive to learn. I know Steve is Adobe proactive, but I've never felt the same love.
- tom moody 9-16-2006 12:47 am


I had no idea that you had a photoshop allergy. It made sense to me the first time I opened it. But most software took way more work to figure out, Director was hard won, but Flash was a bit less work for me after Director. I won't touch Illustrator. That's the program I hate more than anything on earth.

A musician friend of mine once had me howling because the only photoshop tools that he would use were the levels. (he understood mid-ranges)
- L.M. 9-16-2006 12:58 am


It made sense the first time I opened it, I just hate it. I've published several rants on Photoshop, so I'm surprised you're surprised.
- tom moody 9-16-2006 1:11 am


By un-intuituive I'm referring to procedures such as the one Steve is describing--it's not like you can just draw an area and press "burn in."
- tom moody 9-16-2006 1:16 am


Point taken, since it's the way I feel about Illustrator, I got the theory of drawing with that stupid tool, but I hated doing it, took no pleasure in its use, took no pleasure from the results.

(and I skip over everyone else's rants because I'm much too absorbed by my own)
- L.M. 9-16-2006 1:39 am


I think that with photoshop anyone can achieve the results they desire by just screwing around with it until it works for them, there are no "right" solutions. Illustrator on the other hand is useless without a fair amount of tutorial and practice. That said, I LOVE illustrator and i like photoshop.
- steve 9-16-2006 4:18 am


illustrator is my fav drawing tool
- mark 9-16-2006 9:55 pm





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